What CaT Dragged In
What CaT Dragged In is the eleventh episode of Project Deca. It serves as a tribute to Alien Biology with CaT, the Featured Series of 2018. Episode ---- Attai stared at the sign in front of him, trying unsuccessfully to make heads or tails of what he was reading. "Ben 10 Fan Fiction Wiki..." Attai muttered. "I know Tennyson, but what does that other stuff mean?" He glanced around the room and noticed a display board labeled "Recent Activity". Walking over to examine it, he noticed that it showed a list of near-nonsensical titles and several sloppily-recolored renders of Ben himself. "There is no possible way this could get any dumber." Attai huffed. At that moment, a purple tabby cat with magenta stripes and blue eyes walked out from behind the corner of a nearby hallway. "Oh, but it CAN get dumber!" The cat announced. ---- An explosion of electricity burst from the surface of the lake as an eel-like alien with black skin jumped out of the water and grabbed onto Ubermensch, attempting to electrocute him. "Electricity Immunity." Ubermensch stated. "Your efforts are in vain." Ubermensch grabbed the eel-like alien by the throat and threw it back into the forest, causing it to smash through a few trees before rolling to a halt next to Terox. The alien reverted to Mig in an orange flash, who stood up and groaned as Terox looked at him with a scowl. "Nice one, genius." Terox snorted. "What are you gonna try next time, asking him politely to leave?" "Well, I'm not seeing you coming up with any better ideas." Mig hissed. "You wanna keep talking shit or you wanna do something here?" "Oh, I'm gonna do something alright." Terox said. "Like what?" Terox turned around and bolted in the other direction, dodging trees as he ran through the thick woods. Mig cursed and ran after him, with the two eventually ducking behind a large boulder. "For someone who made turning my life into a living hell look easy, you sure are kind of useless." Mig snapped. "Well maybe if someone hadn't died so easily, I might not be this out of practice right now." Terox huffed. Mig's only response was a stern glare. "Boy, this sure does take me back." Terox laughed. "You and me, teaming up to fight an all-powerful foe...I remember it like it was yesterday." "From my perspective, it pretty much was yesterday." Mig grunted, peeking out from behind the rock. "And you didn't even help me fight Gamma; you just swooped in after I got his power and stabbed me in the back." "Hey, for once, there was no actual stabbing involved." Terox protested. "All I did was take back my Aqasian Stabilizer." "And I guess killing me and dooming the universe was just a bonus, huh?" Mig spat. "Well, if you're going to be pedantic about it-" Terox was interrupted as the rock the two were hiding behind abruptly shattered into dust and blew away in the wind. "You know, most people understand the concept of being quiet when they're trying to stay hidden." Ubermensch said, approaching the two. "Yeah, and most people know that it's rude to butt into a conversation." Terox huffed. "You've slaughtered countless people for fun." Ubermensch retorted. "You have no right to criticize the breach of social conventions." "As the one person here who isn't into mass murder, you're both total shitheads." Mig snapped. "You misjudge me." Ubermensch replied, casually grabbing Terox by the throat. "I'd rather avoid bloodshed if possible." "Ha! Bullshit!" Terox choked out, prompting Ubermensch to crush his head using his free hand. "Violence is a means to an end, not a proper goal in and of itself." Ubermensch continued, dropping Terox's body. "Once I master this form, employment of it will no longer be necessary." "What are you talking about?" Mig scowled, pulling up the Gammatrix. "The Entity has power over all abilities in all timelines." Ubermensch explained. "With that in mind, the extermination of the Untermensch is no longer the only path to success for the Aryan people." "That doesn't explain anything." "Let me finish." Ubermensch tsked. "With this power, I can simply transform all undesirables into perfect Aryan beings." "...You can't be serious." Mig said incredulously. "Would you rather I exterminate them?" Ubermensch retorted. "This solution is not just a mercy, but a service. The conflicts created by lesser and greater races clashing would all but disappear, rendered obsolete in an instant." "Oh, don't try to paint yourself as some kind of humanitarian saint." Terox hissed, reforming his head. "If you really wanted to, you could just create world peace without changing anyone's identity. If you wanna get rid of people, just come out and say it, you goddamn snob." "Don't patronize me." Ubermensch replied. "An indiscriminate degenerate such as you would never understand my ideals." "Oh, I understand you alright." Terox growled. "I understand you're completely up your own ass!" "I care not for the opinions of a goal-deprived idiot!" Ubermensch threw his hand out, causing the earth underneath Terox to split apart and consume him. "Seemed to take that awful personal for someone who doesn't care about it." Mig noted before slamming down on the Gammatrix and transforming into an orange-skinned winged alien resembling a goblin. "If you're trying to escape, I can tell you right now that flying isn't going to help." Ubermensch said. "I don't think you get the point of me choosing Fright Height." Mig replied. Fright Height locked eyes with Ubermensch, his black sclera growing to entirely consume his slit-like orange pupils. "Trying to intimidate me isn't going to work!" Ubermensch snapped, throwing a punch at Fright Height. Right as his fist made contact with its target, it exploded into a spray of blood and fractured bone chunks that could not have reasonably fit into his hand to begin with. "WHAT?!" Ubermensch drew back, genuinely caught off-guard by this. Attempting to heal his injury, he found that every power he tried only seemed to worsen the stream of blood now spraying from his arm. "Why isn't this healing?!" "It isn't your hand that's been destroyed, Ubermensch." Fright Height had disappeared, his hissing voice emanating from the surrounding trees. "It's your mind." "So this is an illusion?" Ubermensch muttered. "Why would you tell me that?" "If you want to call it an illusion, that's fine by me." Fright Height's voice replied. "But it isn't going to help you much." "You sound fairly confident." Ubermensch tsked. "More confident than you should be." Ubermensch snapped his fingers, trying to dispel the illusion. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. Illusion Negation, Illusion Awareness, Illusion Reflection, all invoked and all useless. "Are you quite done?" Fright Height's voice whispered. "Not an illusion, then." Ubermensch's eyes narrowed. "Something differe-" Ubermensch paused. "Where is Terox?" "What are you talking about?" Fright Height hissed. "His energy signature is gone, and I didn't see him teleport away." Ubermensch noted, surveying his surroundings. "Come to think of it..." Ubermensch reached out with various detection abilities, trying to find any other sources of life. Nothing. "Either we suddenly became the only two living things on this planet or you've isolated us from the real world somehow." Ubermensch tsked. "This doesn't appear to be Terox's pocket dimension either, so if I were to hazard a guess..." Ubermensch broke a branch off a nearby tree and rammed it through his chest. Almost immediately, his eyes snapped open, and he found himself lying alone on the forest floor. Fright Height and Terox's energy signatures were a good mile or two away from his location. "Nightmare Inducement." Ubermensch got to his feet and dusted himself off. "Clever." Ubermensch cracked his neck. "But not clever enough." ---- Attai stared at the talking feline with a disbelieving glare as the cat in question simply began scratching its ear as if nothing was strange about this situation. "And you are...?" Attai asked apprehensively. "The name's CaT, CaT the cat, the cat named CaT." The cat said. "But you can just call me CaT. I'm an admin around these parts." "Right..." Attai narrowed his eyes. "Where am I, exactly?" "Oh, you're in hell." CaT replied casually. "Technically you're in the Ben 10 Fan Fiction Wiki, but it's the same thing on principle." "Yeah, I got the name from the sign, but what does that mean?" Attai demanded. "Well, a wiki is like an online volunteer-run encyclopedia for whatever you can think of." CaT explained. "Ben 10 Fan Fiction is...well it's fan fiction about Ben 10 I'm not sure how to break that part down for you." "You mean there's an entire archive for stuff like that?" Attai scowled. "Who would even write fan fiction about Ben 10 of all people anyway?" "Mostly dysfunctional teenagers." "Yeah, that checks out." "All that aside, how did you get here?" CaT asked. "That's unusual for a number of reasons." "As far as I can tell, I got flung out of the multiverse." Attai grumbled. "I can't get a solid reading on this place." "Well then, we need to put you back into the multiverse pronto." CaT said, turning around. "Follow me, I need to look some stuff up in Categories." "How is information from fan fiction going to help in this situation?" Attai crossed his arms skeptically. "You'll see." ---- Fright Height and Terox flew through the air, crossing over a large lake in the middle of the woods. "Since when can you do that?" Terox questioned. "Since I've had the form, I assume." Fright Height replied. "Didn't seem relevant to use until now." "Even against me?" Terox laughed. "Do you even sleep?" Fright Height shot back. "Eh, fair." Terox shrugged. "You think we lost him?" "No idea." Fright Height said. "Believe it or not, inducing nightmares does not automatically include being able to track your targets with your mind." "Well, that's dumb." Terox snorted. "Why does it even matter?" Fright Height huffed. "Just teleport us to a different universe!" "You think I didn't try that already?" Terox snapped. "It isn't working! I got away from him last time by doing that, so I have to assume he got wise to it and figured out a counter ability or some shit." "That would be correct." Ubermensch's voice came from behind them. Fright Height and Terox turned around just in time to be on the receiving end of an electric blast that sent them careening downwards. For good measure, Ubermensch summoned a meteor from the sky and sent it flying into the two, smashing them into the bottom of the lake and vaporizing the water around it. Terox blasted apart the meteorite from within, vaporizing it and leaving the lake bed completely empty. More than a little fatally wounded by all this, Fright Height reverted back to Mig in an orange flash, who groaned in pain as he got to his feet. "Don't be such a drama queen, there's no way your pain carries over from form to form." Terox rolled his eyes. "Physically, no, but it can take a bit for your brain to catch up." Mig grunted, dusting himself off. "Since your brain is part of your physical body, technically-" Terox started sardonically. "Do you have to be such an asshole all the time?" Mig growled. "Call it a hobby." "The only hobby you're capable of pursuing, apparently." Ubermensch landed a few meters away from them with his arms crossed. "It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic." "Shove it up your shiny metal ass, you knödel-brained necromaniac." Terox snapped. "At least I can admit I just fuck with people because I like doing it instead of hiding behind some dumbass ideology." "For someone who likes to scheme so much, you can certainly be a bit of a dullard." Ubermensch tsked. "I don't know how it works for your species, but for humans, our ideals are what drive our actions, whether we acknowledge it or not." "Unless your ideals extend to cover your favorite breakfast cereal, I think you're talking out your ass." Terox snorted. "I may not be a human, and thank Christ for that, but I've lived among you long enough to know how arbitrary most of your decisions are." "You really don't-" Ubermensch shook his head. "Why am I still talking to you instead of just killing you and being done with it?" "He has a special way of getting on people's nerves." Mig stated dryly. "So I've noticed." Ubermensch muttered. "Well, no matter." Ubermensch summoned a black hole in the sky above them, which began sucking in and destroying everything in the surrounding area. "You can't talk your way out of this one." ---- CaT and Attai stood inside a large, library-like room filled with rows upon rows of tall shelves filled with books of all shapes and sizes. CaT gestured for Attai to follow him and lead him into one of the aisles, where a young adult wearing a sort of old-fashioned outfit with a large, flowery hat sat cross-legged several feet above the ground reading a book. Her long blonde hair partially covered an eyepatch sitting over her right eye, while a small white bandage sat on her left cheek. "Okay, who the hell is this?" The woman asked, looking up from her book with a flat stare. "Same question here." Attai crossed his arms. "Right, right." CaT waved them off. "Attai, this is Lydia. Lydia, this is Attai. The more you two can ignore each other, the better off we'll be." "Fine by me." Lydia tsked, going back to reading. "That really doesn't explain-" Attai paused. "Wait, how did you know my name? I never introduced myself." "Not important." CaT replied. "We don't need to get into it right now." "I disagree!" Attai growled. "And seriously, who is this?" "Nobody important." CaT shrugged. "Just some freeloader." "Excuse me?" Lydia put down her book with a glare. "I was here long before any of you people came in and started screwing around with this 'internet' crap." "How were we supposed to know Wikia built their servers on a graveyard?" CaT argued. "I don't see how this is my problem." "How is it not your problem?!" "What are you people talking about?!" Attai snapped. "This all just sounds like gibberish!" "It pretty much is." CaT nodded in mock thought. "Long story short though, Wikia built the servers hosting us on top of an old murder mansion or something and now the wiki exists on a metaphysical plane shaped by the souls of the damned. Pretty much the same thing as in real life, just more literal." "That 'old murder mansion' was my house." Lydia huffed. "I'd appreciate it if you stopped using my family tragedy for dumbass meta-jokes." "Well, that wouldn't be very in-character for me, would it?" CaT tsked. "Now, with all that settled, let's get to the books, shall we?" "That settled absolutely nothing." Attai said. "Too bad." CaT jumped onto a nearby shelf and began walking along the edge, passing over various titles and grabbing a few here and there. After a couple of minutes of this, he jumped to the floor, carrying several of the tomes with him. "You wanna tell me what this is all about?" Attai asked impatiently. "Not really, but for the sake of time, I'm just gonna be blunt with you." CaT said, sorting through the books. "You really aren't supposed to be here." "Trust me, I'd rather not be." Attai huffed. "No, like, you really, really, aren't supposed to be here." CaT continued. "You are supposed to be far and away removed from this reality." "Would you care to elaborate on that?" Attai raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so, uh...think of it like this:" CaT grabbed a book from his pile and held it sideways with the pages facing Attai. "Let's say everything that exists is in this book right here, and each page is a 'layer' of reality." "Alright..." "Since you're from a story on the wiki, you should be down here." CaT opened to one of the last pages of the book. "But somehow, you got all the way up to here." He closed the book and reopened it to a spot in the book only a few pages in. "That's not supposed to happen." "What would the first page be?" Attai asked. "That's where the guy writing this is." CaT replied. "It's the 'real' reality above every level of fiction and metafiction. Everything underneath it has more and more layers of fiction applied to it as you go." "Let me get this straight." Attai pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "You're saying none of this is real?" "Yes and no." CaT said. "It's 'real' within the context of the layer we're on, but the layer we're on isn't 'real' in the context of the above layer, and so on and so forth." "That is an extremely obfuscating explanation." Attai grumbled. "If you can explain it better, by all means, be my guest." CaT shrugged, putting away the book. "Right now, we need to figure out how to put you back where you belong." "Oh, for the love of...when you're talking about how things are 'real' or 'not real', what exactly do you mean by that?" Attai demanded. "Well, only the top layer of reality is really 'real'." CaT stated. "Everything underneath it is just fiction made up by someone on the top layer." "Excuse me?" "How much do I have to spell this out for you?" CaT rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm just a meta-aware author avatar of the guy writing this that's had its ego artificially inflated to make up for the author's lack of self-confidence via self-deprecating humor, and you're just a character from a story he's writing on this wiki. All this around us is just a convoluted setting for telling meta stories set 'inside' the wiki itself. You dig?" "Wait, so this place..." Attai paused as the realization hit him. "This is literally a goddamn fan fiction website about Ben fucking 10?!" "Yep, and you only exist because this does." CaT nodded. "You gotta be shitting me..." Attai muttered, falling to his knees. "My entire existence is just...some sick series of events written down by some asshole on the internet?!" "Yeah, that's what I just said." "Does...does any of this even matter?" Attai grabbed at his hair. "Do we even have free will?!" "Inasmuch as anyone has free will." CaT scratched one of his ears. "Everyone is basically just a collection of multiple 'if/and' statements that react to different circumstances with pre-determined...alright, look, that's a whole can of worms for another fishing trip. Bottom line is it doesn't really matter no matter what layer of reality you're on, so just go with it." "What, no Rick and Morty reference to jokingly handwave how pretentious that sounded?" Lydia snorted. "That gag's been played to death." CaT grunted. "Never stopped you before." "Bite me." "So, what..." Attai stammered. "What now?" "Now we figure out how to get you back to your story before you have an aneurysm triggered by this existential crisis you're apparently having." CaT tsked. "Normally I would know how these stories play out, but since I'm part of this one, I'm just as stuck as you are. Hence why we came here." "How is this place supposed to help?" Attai asked. "Well, I was hoping to find a free-use alien that could get you back into the multiverse you got yote out of, but it doesn't look like any of them can do that specifically." CaT explained, flipping through one of the books. "4D2 is close, but trying to use it here would be a bit of a stretch, so I think we're gonna have to make a new alien." "Make a new alien?" Attai's face clenched into a scowl. "How are we supposed to do that?" "With the power of barely-plausible science, of course!" CaT announced in an overly-dramatic tone. "It looks like it's time for a lesson in !" "...Was zu Hölle was that?!" Attai yelled. "Why, a completely unnecessary meta gag, of course!" CaT replied with stalwart determination. "Onward!" ---- All Terox and Mig could do was watch as the black hole created by Ubermensch expanded further each second. Before it grew large enough to consume them, however, its growth suddenly started to go backward, shrinking it down until it had disappeared. Looking around for the source of this phenomenon, the three gathered there spotted Millennia approaching them with a weary smirk. "What are you doing here?" Ubermensch demanded. "Clearly my rogueish charms were simply too endearing for her to leave me alone for long." Terox said. "Great theory, but no." Millennia chuckled, walking up next to Mig. "I'm here because I need to clean up my own mess." "Is that so?" Ubermensch raised an eyebrow. "When I sold you people that tech, I gotta admit, I didn't expect you to actually figure out how to use it." Millennia sighed. "Granted, in most timelines you didn't, but still." "As I recall, you're the one who sold us the Chronosapien Time Bombs to destroy the timelines where we failed to do so." Ubermensch pointed out. "You're awfully far along in this series of events to suddenly have a change of heart." "Frankly, I just didn't consider you people an actual threat." Millennia shrugged. "Your Fuhrer was a fruitcake, Chronosapien Time Bombs ain't exactly foolproof, and your best universe-destroying asset was Terox, who was just as likely to kill you as he was anyone else." "That's true." Terox nodded smugly. "Now that you've gotten your hands on some real power, though, I seriously have to object." Millennia tsked. "I didn't help kill off an elitist space empire just to accidentally give rise to another one, you know?" "And this matters to you why?" Ubermensch said. "I thought you were happy as long as you could turn a profit." "Kinda hard to profit off dead people." Millennia retorted. "Considering the Nazi's track record, I don't have a whole lot of confidence that you'll leave much alive." "Perhaps if you were talking to my former Fuhrer, you'd have a point." Ubermensch replied. "But I have a different plan. Instead of exterminating the Untermensch, I will simply convert them into perfected Aryan forms, transforming all of reality into the ultimate utopia." Millennia went silent for a moment, then suddenly burst out laughing. "What's so funny?" Ubermensch growled. "What, you actually think that's gonna work?" Millennia choked out. "You're kidding!" "Why wouldn't it?" Ubermensch snapped. "Forcing your idea of an acceptable identity onto people is never going to end well." Millennia said. "Your so-called 'Aryan Utopia' is going to look a hell of a lot like a dystopia to almost everyone else." "I suppose I shouldn't have expected someone like you to understand my ideals." Ubermensch shook his head. "No matter. If you stand against me, then I'll simply have to kill y-" Ubermensch froze mid-speech. Mig looked around in confusion to see if something had interrupted him, but only found that Terox was evidently frozen too. "Uh...what's going on?" "I stopped time while the big lug was too busy monologuing to notice." Millennia walked over and grabbed Mig's arm. "Come on, let's get out of here and let these two go at it. No matter who wins, that's gonna be one less problem for everyone." "If Terox goes, so does the energy I need to recreate my universe." Mig yanked his arm out of Millennia's grip. "Besides, what's your plan for after Ubermensch gets unfrozen? He's just going to come after us again." "If you've got a better plan, I'm all ears." "There's still one thing I could try using to beat him." Mig said, pulling up the Gammatrix. "Ubermensch can use any ability he can think of. That's his 'rule'." "Right..." Millennia raised a curious eyebrow. "If that's the case..." Mig began scrolling through aliens. "I'll just have to bend that rule." ---- Attai and CaT wandered through the halls of the wiki, passing various bizarre rooms that each represented a different page. CaT was humming some weebshit to himself while Attai kept a close eye on their surroundings, thoroughly distrustful of the environment. "This place manifests everything you people write about on the website, right?" Attai asked. "Pretty much, yeah." CaT nodded. "So are there any dangerous characters or plot devices we need to worry about?" "Only if we wander into their series." CaT replied. "There was one time a bunch of things got screwed up on the wiki which totally wasn't my fault where elements from different series got mixed up on their own, but if everything's working right, we won't have to deal with them." "Noted." Attai grunted. "So where exactly are we headed?" "Like I said earlier, Alien Biology with CaT." CaT said. "It's my series where I analyze the potential 'realistic' biology of Ben 10 aliens." "Exactly how much spare time do you have?" Attai asked incredulously. "More than I need but not nearly enough." CaT yawned. "Anyway, the meta representation of it here is a research laboratory, so that's where I'm gonna try to track down the info we need." "Why do you need to be that specific about it in the first place?" Attai tsked. "Can't you just whip up a barebones alien outline, throw it on a page, and call it a day?" "Despite my admittedly very fashionable and enviable looks, I'm not an infinitely creative god of spontaneous inspiration." CaT huffed. "I get most of my ideas from doing research on stuff. A half-baked alien concept isn't going to get you anywhere other than some Ben 10 Discord's cringe compilation." "'Discord'?" CaT suddenly froze up and moved his tail out in front of Attai, gesturing for him to stop. A gray, featureless humanoid figure lurched out from behind the corner of a nearby hallway, aimlessly wandering into their path. "What the hell is that?" Attai whispered. "It's a new user." CaT replied quietly. "If we stand perfectly still, maybe it won't notice us." At that exact moment, the gray figure turned in their direction, pausing upon noticing them. "¡Dame tus plantillas!" It screeched "Okay, what now?" Attai hissed at CaT. "Fucking run." Attai and CaT turned and bolted in the other direction, whereupon the featureless avatar began chasing them, destroying everything in its path. "¡Como consigo mod!" "How do we get this thing off our trail?!" Attai snapped. "We'll have to wear it out!" CaT said. "They don't listen to warnings!" "¡Acabo de sacar este arte de las imágenes de Google, no me pueden advertir!" "Seriously?!" Attai groaned. The chase continued, with the new user slowly gaining on them. "Wait a second, aren't you an admin?" Attai pointed out. "Why not just hit it with a banhammer or something?!" "Banhammers aren't a literal object you can use!" CaT hissed. "What kind of narrative would be stupid enough to-" CaT's pupils dilated as he realized something and skid to a halt in front of an intersection, turning to the left before continuing to run. "What the hell are you doing?!" Attai demanded, running after him. "I know where to get a banhammer!" CaT yelled back. "We just have to get there before that thing catches us!" "Weren't you just saying a banhammer would only exist in something stupid?!" "That's the thing about this wiki!" CaT said. "You can always find something stupid!" ---- "-ou as well." Ubermensch finished speaking as time unfroze. He raised an arm toward Millennia but paused upon seeing Mig's current form. Terox followed his line of sight towards Mig and jumped a bit in surprise. "Jesus, when did you do that?!" "We have a Chronian in our audience, so I can only assume there was a time stop we missed." Ubermensch tsked. "Can't say I see the point, however." Mig stood tall as a humanoid alien clad in a bronze suit with black accents. Three eyes peered out from underneath a top hat-like helmet with a large horn protruding from it, while two gears circled around inside of a clock-like mechanism on his chest. "The 'point' here is Stopwatch, at your service!" Mig stated in an energetic radio voice, tipping the brow of his helmet. "With a little bit of good luck and a lotta bit of elbow grease, here's hoping we won't need to see to you again." "How many tricks do you have in that Gammatrix I never knew about?" Terox asked, sounding almost insulted. "Did you even take our relationship seriously?" "This is not the time for that discussion, and neither will be any other time." Stopwatch replied. "If you really want to know, then help me batty-fang this good fellow so I can have at you later." "Help you what?" Millennia laughed. "Batty-fang, thrash him thoroughly, give him the ol' one-two!" Stopwatch said. "Kick his ass, you dimwits!" "Why are you using old-timey slang?" Terox questioned. "You sound like an idiot." "Better to sound like one than be one, chuckaboo." Stopwatch stated sardonically. "To be perfectly frank, I don't even know how I know half these words; it just feels appropriate." "I've been to Victorian England on business before, and it's decently appropriate." Millennia nodded, observing Stopwatch's somewhat Steampunk aesthetic. "Word of advice: don't go to Victorian England. If you don't get cholera, you'll get depression." "I'm still here, you know." Ubermensch snapped. "Not for long, you won't be." Stopwatch cracked his fingers. "A bold statement." Ubermensch snapped his fingers, bringing time once more to a halt. Even Millennia was unable to move, with the powers of the Entity overriding her own temporal abilities. "But not a wise one." Ubermensch muttered to nobody in particular. As he pulled back to create an incinerating heatwave, Stopwatch suddenly flew over to him and punched him in the gut. Stumbling back more out of shock than pain, Ubermensch lost his focus, allowing time to resume as normal. "Perhaps you'd like to rethink that last statement." Stopwatch dusted his hands off. "What did you do?" Ubermensch growled. "I just bent the rules for your time stop a bit." Stopwatch tsked dismissively. "By no means an easy task, but simple enough." "Bent the- Mig, what the hell are that thing's powers?!" Terox snapped. "Time things, mostly." Stopwatch replied. "Bending the laws of time and physics as well, but only to a reasonable degree, of course." "Define 'reasonable degree'." Ubermensch demanded. "I'm afraid I've told you too much already." Stopwatch said. "On the off chance you have a specific power that can counteract mine, I'd rather not help you pin down which one it is." "Fair enough, I suppose." Ubermensch tsked. "Not that it will help you either way." ---- Attai and CaT ducked into a page room with the new user trailing close behind, now Naruto running in an attempt to pick up speed (which does not work but they weren't about to correct them). Within the room were several armies fighting each other, while in the center of the chaos stood a tall man swiftly growing in size. "What the FUCK is all this?!" Attai demanded. "You don't want to know!" CaT replied. "All we need to focus on right now is getting to that guy in the middle!" Attai and CaT weaved their way through clashing waves of buffoonery until they reached the middle, where some armored guy with a hammer was being lifted into the air by the giant man. CaT jumped into the air and snatched the hammer from the guy being lifted, who appeared to take offense to this. "Bro, that's my hammer, bro!" "Oh shut up, it didn't work for you in this scene anyway." CaT snorted, jumping back to the ground. "What the bro?!" The guy yelled. "Bro, that's not very bro of you, bro!" CaT ignored the guy's bro-laden last words as the giant man flung him into the stratosphere and hit the dab. "Was that supposed to happen?" Attai asked incredulously. "What, the dab?" CaT said. "No, but it's not any less stupid than the original scene, I can tell you that much." The new user continued running full-speed toward the two, but as soon as it got within range, CaT smacked it over the head with the hammer, causing it to disappear. "Was that it?" Attai grunted. "Yep." CaT tossed away the hammer, accidentally kneecapping someone behind him. "Now come on, let's get out of here before anyone realizes we messed with the story." "We?" Attai gave CaT a skeptical look. "You're the only one who changed anything." "Yes, but I refuse to take full responsibility for it." CaT tsked. "Let's move." ---- Stopwatch lunged forward and grabbed Ubermensch by the face, throwing him into the air. Terox grinned and teleported to the apex of Ubermensch's arc of travel, blasting him with a wave of energy that sent him crashing into the ground. Millennia pulled the Cross-Timer module out of her storage dimension and plugged it into her belt, summoning the armor's hovering tank mode that began blasting Ubermensch's position. Ubermensch growled and slammed his fist into the earth, creating an explosion of magma that flew out in all directions. Stopwatch accelerated the magma's cooling process, turning it to stone and then aging it to dust within a matter of seconds. Terox flew down and grabbed Ubermensch by the throat, planting him in the dirt and bombarding him with a barrage of energy blasts. Ubermensch summoned a tornado, blowing Terox away momentarily, only for Stopwatch to rush in and grab his arm, trying to reverse his personal timeline and revert him to human. Realizing this, Ubermensch quickly applied a temporal ability immunity to himself and punched Stopwatch away with a diamond-covered fist. Millennia pulled the Cross-Timer module's lever, causing the tank to split apart and attach to her, giving her a layer of armor. Ubermensch narrowed his eyes and began gathering nuclear energy before igniting a fission reaction, creating a nuclear explosion. Millennia acted swiftly, hitting the expanding mass of scorching radiation with the Cross-Timer tank cannons, erasing it from existence. Terox rushed in and kicked Ubermensch to the ground, this time not stopping at pushing him into the earth. Dirt and stone exploded out from underneath them as Terox drove Ubermensch beneath the crust of the Earth, drilling a hole into the planet at ludicrous speed. As they approached the core, however, Ubermensch dug his arms into the sides of the tunnel formed by his body, forcing them to a halt inside the liquid metal of the Earth's outer core. He used the power of heat absorption to draw energy from his surroundings and then converted that into kinetic energy, swinging upwards and landing a solid kick to Terox's face that sent him rocketing upwards through the hole and into the atmosphere. Stopwatch used his powers to reverse the tunnel's timeline, burying Ubermensch inside the Earth, only for Ubermensch to teleport behind him and elbow him in the back, sending him flying across the forest and crashing gracelessly through several trees. "You okay, kid?" Millennia teleported over to Stopwatch and blasted apart a couple of logs pinning him down. "I swear to God if I get thrown across the battlefield one more time..." Stopwatch rubbed his head, getting to his feet. "Wait, where's Ubermensch?" "Well, he's probably still over-" Millennia cut herself off as she turned around to find that Ubermensch had disappeared from the other side of the forest. "Huh." "...Follow-up question." Stopwatch pointed at the sky. "Is it just me, or did this Earth not have two suns before?" Millennia looked up at where Stopwatch was pointing, finding a second blinding orb of light in the sky. "Damn, I knew the Nazis had a Scorched Earth policy, but this is just ridiculous." Millennia whistled. "We should probably leave." "What, and just let him destroy this Earth?" Stopwatch snapped. "What if Attai hasn't made a backup of it yet?!" "Well, I happen to know he hasn't been to this one yet, but still..." Millennia sighed. "Alright, fine. Does that alien really have enough power to take out an entire sun, though?" "Probably not." Stopwatch grunted. "We're gonna need to take this somewhere else." ---- Attai and CaT walked down a dark, winding staircase with flickering lights overhead, giving the place an atmosphere of quiet eerieness and probably several OSHA violations. "Are you sure this is the right way?" Attai grumbled. "Well, it's a'' way." CaT replied. "I didn't want to risk running into anyone else, so I decided we'd take the scenic route." "You and I must have different definitions of the word 'scenic'." The two eventually reached the bottom of the staircase, emerging into a white-floored area that extended farther than the eye could see. A blood-red ocean sat in front of them, covering most of the room, with the black silhouettes of unknown mountains visible in the distance. The night sky above them was pierced by a green line of data flowing across the horizon, while giant, motionless T-posing Upchucks wearing yeehaw hats and mismatched ginger beards dotted the oceanic landscape. Attai turned around, only to find that the entrance to the area had disappeared. "On second thought, we might have taken a wrong turn somewhere." CaT coughed. "Where are we?" Attai asked. "In the darkest depths of the wiki, where nothing makes sense and time is all but meaningless." CaT explained. "That and an Eva reference." "The hell is an Eva- no, you know what, I don't want to know." Attai shook his head. "More importantly, how do we get out of here?" "Well, either I choke you out, you choke me out, or we turn into Sunny-D." CaT said. "Call me biased, but I'm not really leaning toward any of those options." "And I have no idea what's going on either way, so I guess we're stuck." Attai huffed. "Fantastic." The two of them went silent for a moment. "On the bright side, it's not a terrible place to get stuck in." CaT yawned. "Better here than anywhere in real life, if you know what I mean." "How is ''this better than anything in reality?" Attai snorted. "For you it might not be, but for me, it's like fifteen steps up." CaT scratched his ear. "This should be pretty obvious, but I'm not a stunningly gorgeous cat with unbelievable charm in the real world." "You don't say?" Attai rolled his eyes. "Yeah, in reality, I'm an obese twenty-year-old autistic invalid who can't even hold down a job." CaT sighed. "Literally autistic, by the way, I'm not using it as a slur." "Noted." "I'm basically useless in real life, but here..." CaT gestured to their general environment. "I like, matter and shit. I have friends and people who care about what I do. My disability doesn't hold me back as much as it does in the real world. Everything's just better." "You can't use a virtual world to avoid reality forever." Attai said. "Trust me, I know." CaT grunted. "But unlike fictional characters, real people don't get 'character arcs' that resolve all their problems in a nice little bow. Sometimes people's lives are just sad for a while and then end. Everything sucks, we live in a society, blah blah blah. End of story." "Aren't you kind of infamous for not being able to end stories like that?" Attai raised an eyebrow. "Even when you do end a series with something depressing, you just go back and retcon it eventually." "First off, stop knowing things you wouldn't be able to know outside of a meta context, it's gonna make shit harder to follow." CaT said. "Secondly, yeah, no shit, I write escapism. If I wanted to make sad shit I'd just record vlogs of me trying and failing to get up before noon every day." "You're just a real ray of sunshine, aren't you?" "Bite me." CaT huffed. "Anyway, I doubt people are reading this just to hear me bitch about my problems, so I guess we should probably try to figure out a way out of here." "Normally I'd just teleport us out, but I can't seem to get my powers to work here." Attai said. "I can't even summon the CataloGun." "Yeah, I doubt your transportation system for that works between layers of reality." CaT tsked. "As for your Timewalking abilities, like I said, time is meaningless in this room. You ain't got nothing to walk on." "Alright, you know what, how did we even get in here to begin with if there's no way out?" Attai pointed out. "Unless this is some sort of weird-ass metaphysical mousetrap, there should be something we can do here." "That's not how things work here." CaT shook his head. "It's the internet, remember? Pages you link to don't have to have any links of their own, even if they should as a matter of good practice." "Then just edit the page to give it a link!" Attai snapped. "What makes you think I can-" CaT paused. "Oh wait, yeah, I can do that." "You seriously didn't think of that this whole time?" Attai growled. "I've never claimed to be good at working under pressure." ---- CaT and Attai stumbled into a page room decorated with laboratory equipment and a large computer console in the middle. Attai made his way over to a chair on the other side of the room and flopped down into it as CaT jumped onto the console. "Jesus Christ, that took forever." Attai groaned. "What is wrong with your navigational skills?" "I don't have any, so that's probably it right there." CaT hummed. "Did you know I've lived in the same city for like half my life and I still don't know most of the street names? I can get you to Main Street, State Street, or Redwood, and that's about it." "I did not know that, but it doesn't surprise me." Attai grumbled. "Can we just get to making the alien now so I can go home?" "Yeah, yeah, just give me a moment." CaT pressed a button on the console, causing a holographic projector to rise out of the floor and display two translucent blue grids, one hovering about a foot above the other. "First off, let's take a look at the issue we want to solve here." CaT said. "You know how space-time is often referred to as a sheet, right? 'Fabric of space-time' and all that?" "Yes..." Attai's brow furrowed. "Well, in this model, each of these 'sheets' is their own layer of reality." CaT explained. "We can deform the sheets with forces like gravity..." CaT pressed another button, creating a sphere on the top grid that represented a planet, which sank into the material. "But that won't let us get from one sheet to another." "So what will?" Attai grunted. "Instead of deforming the sheet with a blunt weight, we need to pierce through it with a direct point." CaT said. "Problem is, even an infinite mass compressed into an infinitely small point would only succeed in either making a really deep pit or creating a wormhole between different parts of the sheet, so stuff like gravity ain't gonna cut it. We're gonna need something like..." CaT paused before his eyes suddenly lit up. "A drill!" "So...Armodrillo?" Attai raised an eyebrow. "No, something with some sort of space-time warping ability." "Alien X?" "No, something that's not bullshit." CaT waved him off. "Professionals have standards." "You know Aaron's gonna call you out on that reference, right?" "He might IF HE EVER READS THE FUCKING SHOW." "Aside from that, since when are you a professional?" Attai tsked. "Since I bought that degree off eBay." "You still use eBay?" Attai snorted. "Ok boomer." "You are literally from the 40s, shut the fuck up!" CaT snapped. "Now keep quiet, I need to start researching sea urchins." "...Researching what?" Attai looked bewildered. "Sea urchins, bitch!" CaT yelled. "You heard what I fucking said!" ---- Terox stood on the moon watching as Ubermensch floated in front of the Earth, gradually creating a second sun. "Welp, there goes that planet." He cackled to himself. "Man, I love talking in space even though there's no atmosphere." Stopwatch and Millennia suddenly appeared next to him, teleporting in from Earth. "Terox, I need you to create a Transmundane around Ubermensch so that extra star he's cooking up doesn't incinerate the Earth." Stopwatch said. "You do remember who you're talking to, right?" Terox laughed. "I've done shit like this myself just for the hell of it." "Even if you don't give a shit about saving the Earth, we still need to attack him while he's distracted with something else or he'll just adapt again." Stopwatch pointed out. "This is our one shot!" "I still dunno..." Terox taunted. "Maybe if you say 'please'." As of now, Mig was completely fed up with Terox's shit. "BITCH, I WILL CUT YOU!" Stopwatch snapped, grabbing Terox by the collar and dragging his face closer to his own. "YOU THINK THIS IS A FUCKING GAME?!" "...Yes." "THEN LET ME CORRECT YOU!" Stopwatch kneed Terox in the stomach and punched a hole through his chest, then promptly hoisted him into the air and threw him into the ground, burying him in rock. "Damn." Millennia whistled. "See, now why can't you be that passionate all the time?" Terox laughed, blasting his way out of the rubble with his wounds already healed. "It would be way more entertaining!" Stopwatch's only response was a dark glare. "Alright, alright, fine, I'll make the Transmundane." Terox rolled his eyes. "But you're coming with." Terox grabbed Stopwatch and disappeared, which was shortly followed by Ubermensch and the second sun disappearing as well. Millennia folded her arms and sat down cross-legged on the moon to keep an eye on the area. "Well, good luck, I guess." Millennia sighed. "You're gonna need it." ---- "It's done!" CaT's sudden yell startled Attai out of a nap he had inadvertently fallen into after about half an hour of nothing happening. He pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the computer console where CaT was sitting. On the screen was an image of a blue-shelled humanoid alien with an oblong head and white spikes. Parts of its shell were covered in gold markings, while a long, drill-like spike stuck out of its right hand. "...What the hell am I looking at?" "Imperialance, a spiked alien with the ability to drill through dimensions and layers of reality." CaT stated proudly. "I went with a fancy aesthetic to play up its powerset." "Okay, neat, but what does this have to do with sea urchins?" Attai asked wearily. "It's based on the Imperial Lance Urchin." CaT explained. "Sea urchins are able to drill holes in solid rock, so I figured it would only be appropriate to associate them with an OP drilling alien." "That's a thing?" "Dude, nature is weird as shit." CaT said. "You would not believe what you can find if you dig deep enough." "What's this black orb thing?" Attai pointed to a large dot on the alien's head. "Some sort of eye?" "No, the whole body is one big eye." CaT shook his head. "That's the mouth." "The whole body is what now?" "Sea urchins don't have any traditional eyes; their whole body is basically just one big compound eye." CaT explained. "Now, if I were going strictly by their anatomy, the mouth would actually be its anus, but I decided to flip the digestive system on this thing for obvious reasons." "Christ." Attai grimaced. "Hang on, so does that mean-" "Yep." CaT nodded. "Every time you look at a sea urchin from above, you're staring right up its butthole." "I hate nature." Attai groaned. "I hate nature so much." "Agreed." CaT pressed another button on the console. "Now, let's get you outfitted so you can get out of here." The holographic platform whirred as a 3D-printing mechanism emerged from its side and rotated to face right side-up. A hologram of an Omnitrix symbol was displayed on the printer's deck, which was quickly filled in with material by the printer itself. CaT hopped down from the console and grabbed the completed item, handing it over to Attai. "Stick that sucker on and you'll be able to transform into Imperialance." He explained. "I used a similar technology back in 2016 when a bunch of other people got stuck in here and needed transformations." "That easy, huh?" Attai muttered, turning the symbol over in his hands. "Oh, and one more thing." CaT returned to the printer and grabbed a second item it had created. "This place's universe card." "Wait, seriously?" "It's not like you have the CataloGun to scan this place for yourself." CaT said, tossing the card over to him. "Keep in mind this'll only really let you use free-use aliens and shit, but it should still come in handy. With that, you should be good to go." Attai stared at the card in his hand apprehensively. "Well, get going." CaT said. "What are you waiting for?" "It's just...I still can't get over the fact that this isn't real." Attai muttered. "Nothing I do really matters." "Nothing really 'matters' in that sense, dude." CaT shrugged. "It's all as arbitrary as anything else." "But not being able to control your own fate..." Attai said. "Doesn't that bug you?" "Eh, yes and no." CaT sniffed. "People don't even control their own fate in the real world. If you redid your life without any foreknowledge of what was going to happen, nothing would change. Your ending's pretty much predetermined no matter who you are, real or not." "That's not exactly encouraging." Attai grumbled. "It doesn't have to be discouraging either." CaT said. "I got a lot of problems, but I'm pretty alright with my general place in the universe, you know? You don't have to be something cosmically important; it's perfectly fine for you to just be you, whatever you are." "That's all very nice, but what's the practical reason to keep going if none of this matters to the real world?" Attai snapped. "It may not cosmically matter, but I can tell you that it matters to me." CaT replied. "It matters to a lot of people. I mean, come on, look at this place; even if most of the bullshit published on this wiki is stupid as hell, the fact that it even exists proves that it really did mean something to someone at some point. There's a lot riding on you, and even if your story is already determined, you still have to make the decisions that allow it to play out for yourself; if you don't, nothing's ever going to change." Attai stayed silent for a few moments. "...Alright then." He sighed. "I guess...I'll just keep doing what I think is right." "That's the spirit!" CaT attempted to give him a thumbs up but failed to due to his lack of thumbs. "Now get out of here right the fuck now before I have to write any more of this scene!" Attai nodded and placed the Omnitrix symbol on his chest, transforming into Imperialance. After taking a moment to familiarize himself with the form, he lunged forward with his drill, piercing into the fabric of time and space and slipping right through. "Oh thank God, it's over." CaT slumped to the ground. "I am thoroughly out of fucks to give for the day." ---- Ubermensch threw the finished sun he was holding forward, only for it to disappear into thin air. Looking around wildly, he discovered that the universe around him was crumbling away into a swirling red void. Terox and Stopwatch appeared hovering above and in front of him with their arms crossed. "I should have known you'd do this." Ubermensch glared. "Yeah, you really should've." Terox cackled. "Thanks for feeding the Transmundane, by the way. One star isn't much, but every small donation is appreciated." Ubermensch tossed a lightning bolt at Terox, only for Stopwatch to grab it out of the air and throw it right back at him, catching him off-guard. "Your tricks aren't going to work in here." Stopwatch stated. "I can bend physics and Terox has control of everything else about this place. It's about time he finally put it to good use." "Hey, I take exception to that." Terox huffed. "I very graciously used the Transmundane to give the other German twat his memories back, not to mention the time your uncle got to make out with that hot chick in it." "Oh, please." Stopwatch rolled his eyes. "I sincerely doubt you helped Attai out of the goodness of your heart, and Monica was just you...in...disguise." Stopwatch paused as something clicked in his head. "Terox?" "Yes?" "...Did you make out with my fucking uncle?" "I plead the fifth." Ubermensch summoned a cosmic storm and threw it at the two, only for the bolts of cosmic energy crackling everywhere to turn into rubber ducks. The rubber ducks promptly grew arms and began beating the shit out of Ubermensch, who was more bewildered by this turn of events than anything else. "That's...different." Stopwatch said. "You kidding me? It's fucking hilarious!" Terox roared with laughter. "Look at him! He's getting wrecked by rubber ducks! That stupid bitch!" "If you're going to put up such a futile struggle, the least you could do is take it seriously!" Ubermensch yelled, incinerating the rubber ducks with a burst of flames. "What, and give you the satisfaction?" Terox snorted. Ubermensch growled and lunged towards Terox, only to inadvertently impale himself on a massive spike that emerged from nowhere. The rest of Imperialance's body emerged into the area, allowing him to shake Ubermensch off his drill and toss him away. "What the- is this the Transmundane again?!" Imperialance snapped. "Well, look who finally decided to show up!" Terox sneered. "Attai, is that you?" Stopwatch asked. "What is that alien?" "A sea urchin, apparently." Imperialance said. "More importantly, something to get me back here." "That's impossible!" Ubermensch scowled. "Where did you end up that you were able to get your hands on something like that?!" "You don't want to know and I don't want to talk about it." Imperialance tsked. "Now..." Imperialance got into a fencing pose. "Shall we dance?" "I'll deal with you some other day." Ubermensch growled. "I have a Reich to command, and this is taking much longer than it should have. Cherish your last breaths, for they are strictly numbered." With that, Ubermensch disappeared, teleporting out of the universe. Terox laughed and reabsorbed the Transmundane, placing them back in Earth's orbit. "Nothing fills me with more joy than making someone look like a complete idiot." Terox gave a satisfied smirk. "It warms the nonexistent veins of my nonexistent heart." "I'm sure it does." Imperialance grunted, turning to face Terox. "But speaking of you-" Terox had already disappeared by the time Imperialance turned around, leaving him floating there with Stopwatch. "Oh Gott verdammt!" Imperialance snapped. "Guess I'll have to grab his energy some other time." Stopwatch huffed. Stopwatch grabbed Imperialance and teleported both of them down to the Earth's surface, where each of them reverted to human. Millennia appeared on the forest floor next to them, still in a sitting position. "So, how'd it go?" She asked. "Ubermensch ran off, but so did Terox." Mig sighed. "Not that I was expecting anything else." "No offense, but I'm surprised you even survived that whole thing." Attai dusted his hands off. "Your powers are way more limited than mine." "It's not about how much power you have, it's about how you use it." "Fair point." Attai went silent and put his hand to his chin in thought, prompting a raised eyebrow from Mig and a tilted head from Millennia. "Uh...you doing okay there?" Mig asked. "Yeah, you gave me an idea." Attai waved him off. "I'm just trying to think about how to go about it." "What idea?" "I've decided something." Attai continued, ignoring the question. "Even if I'm not in control of my own fate, my choices are still mine to make. No matter what road I'm going to end up on, it's going to be one shaped by my own two hands." "Uh...okay?" Millennia puffed out her cheeks. "What exactly does that mean?" "It means I'm through beating around the bush." Attai stated with steadfast determination. "As of now...I'm taking the fight to Ubermensch." ---- Major Events *Attai says "Ok boomer". Characters Protagonists *Attai Zehn *Miguel Rivers Neutral *CaT *Millennia *Terox Antagonists *Ubermensch Forms Used By Attai *Imperialance By Mig *Eelectric *Fright Height *Stopwatch By Ubermensch *Anti-Life Entity Gallery Stopwatch.png|Stopwatch Imperialance.png|Imperialance CaT Again.png|CaT Lydia PD.png|Lydia PDEp11.png|End of Memevangelion Trivia *I'm so sorry